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The 2026 California gubernatorial election, a contest Democrats have long considered a safe win for their party, has been thrown into unprecedented turmoil following the sudden exit of its leading Democratic contender. Representative Eric Swalwell announced his withdrawal from the race Sunday, mere days after multiple women published sexual assault and misconduct allegations against him through major outlets including the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN. Swalwell has forcefully denied all serious false accusations, though he acknowledged poor judgment in past decisions. Hours after the U.S. House Ethics Committee launched a formal investigation into the claims Monday, Swalwell also announced he would resign his congressional seat entirely.

Swalwell’s departure has amplified a cascade of pre-existing problems that have plagued California’s Democratic party for months in the lead-up to the June primary. Term limit rules bar incumbent Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom from seeking re-election, and high-profile, widely recognized state politicians – including former Vice President Kamala Harris – have opted not to enter the race. That has left a crowded field of eight lesser-known Democratic candidates, all struggling to build name recognition and traction across California’s massive, costly media market. Even before Swalwell’s exit, the fragmented field had split the Democratic base, alarming party strategists.

A March opinion poll from the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies sent shockwaves through state political circles when it found two Republican candidates leading all contenders in voter support, thanks to the fractured Democratic vote. Under California’s unique nonpartisan primary system, the top two vote-getters advance to the November general election regardless of partisan affiliation. That means a June primary outcome could leave Democrats completely shut out of the general election ballot – a nearly unthinkable scenario in one of the most reliably blue states in the U.S., which has not had a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger left office in 2011.

Political experts warn that such an outcome would represent an unforced error of historic proportions for Democrats, particularly in a state where former President Donald Trump’s approval rating hovers below 30%. Beyond the state’s borders, the results of this gubernatorial race carry national weight: California is the fifth-largest economy in the world, and its pioneering policies on climate change, consumer protection, and technology often shape regulatory frameworks across the entire country.

Before his exit, Swalwell had begun to build momentum, pulling ahead of the rest of the crowded Democratic field and positioning the party to lock down a spot in the general election. With his sudden exit, no clear candidate has emerged to absorb his support. Veteran Democratic strategist Garry South, who has managed four gubernatorial campaigns across California, described the current state of the race as unlike anything he has ever witnessed. “The Democratic field was already pretty muddled, even after Swalwell took a small lead,” South noted. “Now, it’s just an outright morass.”

Two candidates are widely seen as the top contenders to pick up Swalwell’s supporters: former Congresswoman Katie Porter and billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer. Neither, however, is a guaranteed lock to win a spot in the general election. Porter has previously faced public reports of alleged staff mistreatment, though she has pledged to improve how she supports her team. Steyer has poured $89 million into campaign advertising across the state, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, but has yet to see a corresponding jump in poll numbers.

The remaining Democratic field includes former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and former State Controller Betty Yee. None of the current candidates, however, have the statewide star power political analysts say the party needs to cut through the clutter, and many voters report struggling to distinguish between the crowded slate of contenders.

For many California voters, the lack of name recognition has left them undecided just two months out from the June 2 primary. Joko Tamura, a 58-year-old Santa Monica resident and registered Democrat who plans to vote in the election, says she does not even recognize half the candidates running. While she has heard of Steyer and Porter, she says she lacks enough information to settle on a favorite, with homelessness and the state’s crippling cost of living topping her list of policy concerns. Jacob Casey, a 42-year-old physician, says his busy schedule has left him unable to follow the race closely, and he is still waiting for a candidate to break through.

Mark DiCamillo, who led the March UC Berkeley poll that first exposed Democrats’ weakness, called the current state of the race unprecedented. “I haven’t seen a primary election for governor with this level of indecision, and lack of voter enthusiasm, with less than two months to go before voting starts to take place,” DiCamillo told the BBC, adding that “voters really don’t have a clear picture of any one of the candidates.”

In the wake of Swalwell’s exit, both Porter and Steyer have moved quickly to fill the political vacuum. Porter has centered her messaging on California’s ongoing housing affordability crisis, framing policy proposals to speed up construction approvals and cut through red tape to lower building costs and expand access to diverse, affordable housing for state workers. Steyer has also leaned into cost of living issues, releasing a social media video outlining his plan to lower living costs for California residents, and attacking former President Trump over the ongoing conflict in Iran, arguing working-class Californians are bearing the financial brunt of the conflict. That messaging has resonated with some undecided voters like Leila Salem, a 28-year-old independent Los Angeles voter who staunchly opposes the war, though she says she still plans to research candidates before making her choice.

While Democrats grapple with internal chaos, California’s Republican party is also facing its own divisions. The two leading GOP candidates are former Fox News host and one-time British Prime Minister David Cameron advisor Steve Hilton, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. The March poll found Republican voters evenly split between the two candidates, and with Democrats holding a 2-to-1 voter registration advantage in the state, locking the Democratic party out of the general election remains the GOP’s only plausible path to a November victory.

Many political analysts expected that Trump’s recent endorsement of Hilton would shift momentum in the GOP race, consolidating Republican support behind Hilton and pushing him ahead of at least one Democratic candidate. However, neither candidate secured the official endorsement of the California Republican Party during its recent convention, leaving the two evenly matched among the party’s base.

Wesley Hussey, a political science professor at Sacramento State University, notes that Democrats have clear reason for anxiety after the collapse of their presumptive front-runner. Still, he added that a conventional general election matching one Democrat and one Republican remains possible if Swalwell’s supporters consolidate behind Porter, Steyer, or even a last-minute entry into the race. “It’s going to take a few days for the dust to settle in this new version of the race,” Hussey said.

In a stunning development that has upended California political circles, long-serving Democratic U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell has formally stepped down from his congressional seat, capping a turbulent week that saw him abandon his bid for California governor amid mounting public and political pressure over multiple sexual misconduct allegations.

The 12-year House incumbent, who represented a Bay Area district adjacent to San Francisco after first winning election in 2012, announced his resignation in a public letter published to the social platform X. In the statement, Swalwell acknowledged poor past judgment while pushing back against the most severe claims leveled against him. “I am deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes in judgement I’ve made in my past,” the statement read. “I will fight the serious, false allegation made against me. However, I must take responsibility and ownership for the mistake I did make.”

The crisis that led to Swalwell’s exit erupted last week, when four women came forward with accusations of misconduct spanning a range of behavior, from unwanted sexual advances to rape. The claims triggered an official ethics inquiry by the U.S. House of Representatives, which was already underway when Swalwell made the decision to resign. Prior to his departure from Congress, the lawmaker had already suspended his campaign for the California governorship amid plummeting support from voters and growing calls from within his own party to step aside.

This is an ongoing breaking news story, with additional details expected to emerge in the coming hours and days. Readers can access real-time updates through the BBC News mobile application, or by following the official BBC Breaking News account on X for the latest alerts.

On a packed Sunday afternoon at Queens’ historic Knockdown Center, thousands of supporters gathered to hear New York City’s youngest mayor in more than a century deliver his highly anticipated first 100-day address, marking a milestone for the progressive leader who shook up city politics last election cycle.

Zohran Mamdani, the self-identified democratic socialist who took office earlier this year, used the rally to highlight early progress on his policy agenda, drawing cheers from crowds holding signs reading “Pothole Politics” and “Childcare for All.” “Nothing is too big for New York City to take on,” Mamdani told the assembled crowd. “And over the past 14 weeks, we have proved that there is no task too small either.”

Among the wins Mamdani touted were 100,000 repaired city potholes and a commitment to secure $1.2 billion in funding to expand access to free childcare. But even as he celebrated early progress, the address laid bare the gap between his ambitious campaign pledges and the realities of governing a complex, cash-strapped major American city, with many top-priority policy goals still far from completion.

Political analysts note that Mamdani’s strategic focus on easily popularized wins early in his term is a deliberate governing choice. Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, a public policy professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, explained: “He’s picking some of the stuff that he thinks he can most easily build support with, trying to find issues that have a broad base of support behind them instead of picking potentially divisive issues to start with.”

One of the most unexpected developments of Mamdani’s first 100 days has been a dramatic thaw in his once-bitter rivalry with Republican President Donald Trump. In the months leading up to the election, the two traded relentless public insults: Trump dismissed Mamdani as a “communist,” while the New York mayor repeatedly vowed to never back down from the White House. But since Mamdani took office, the relationship has shifted dramatically toward unexpected cordiality.

After multiple closed-door meetings, Trump publicly praised Mamdani and said he would be “cheering” for the New York mayor’s success. The pair discussed New York’s crippling housing and cost of living crisis during a widely publicized photo op, where both leaders appeared smiling and relaxed. Lincoln Mitchell, a global affairs expert at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, noted that Trump has at times seemed “mesmerised” by the young progressive mayor.

Crucially, Mamdani has managed to navigate a careful middle path with the Trump White House, avoiding conflict while sticking to his core policy priorities. “What he’s managed to do is thread the needle of not getting Trump’s direct ire, and at the same time, not giving in to him,” Mitchell explained. This detente has already yielded tangible benefits for New York: Trump has followed through on his earlier threat to withhold federal funding from the city, which is already operating with a significant budget deficit, and has not launched a hardline immigration crackdown in New York similar to the one that sparked widespread conflict between federal and local leaders in Minneapolis earlier this year.

On the policy front, one of Mamdani’s most prominent campaign promises was delivering universal free childcare to all New Yorkers, a cornerstone of his plan to tackle the city’s affordability crisis. While full universal childcare is not yet a reality, Mamdani has secured $1.2 billion to launch a phased rollout, with 2,000 free childcare spots for two-year-olds in low-income neighborhoods including Canarsie, Brownsville and Ozone Park set to open by fall 2026. The plan calls for expanding to 12,000 spots by fall 2027, with full universal coverage targeted within four years. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has already committed to fully funding the program’s first two years, though long-term funding beyond that timeline remains unconfirmed.

Mamdani’s first 100 days have not been without controversy. Just weeks into his term, New York City was hit by two of the most severe snowstorms to hit the area in recent decades, with the first storm dropping 13.5 inches of snow on the Bronx in late January, and a second blizzard dumping nearly 20 inches of snow on Central Park in late February. The mayor faced widespread criticism after at least 18 people died during the first storm and the subsequent cold snap, particularly over slow response efforts to unhoused New Yorkers living on the street.

Mamdani moved quickly to adjust his approach ahead of the second storm, activating emergency measures that included opening vacant hotel rooms for temporary shelter, placing 1,400 unhoused people in city shelters, and deploying 150 additional outreach workers to conduct street checks. The mayor also noted that more than 23 million pounds of snow were processed and melted at eight dedicated city melting sites, with thousands of sanitation workers working around the clock to clear major roads and residential streets.

During Sunday’s rally, Mamdani announced a new affordability initiative that will launch before the end of his first term: a city-owned public grocery store in East Harlem’s historic La Marqueta, a public market first established by legendary mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1936. The mayor plans to open five of these public grocery stores across the city in coming years, with the first location expected to cost $30 million, according to reporting from the New York Times. New York City already offers subsidized rent and operational cost coverage for private grocery vendors to expand access to affordable food in underserved neighborhoods, but this marks the city’s first experiment with fully public grocery operations in modern history.

Despite these early steps forward, many of Mamdani’s most ambitious campaign pledges remain stalled, held up by political constraints, budget limitations and the complexities of New York’s system of shared governance. “Anybody who thought he would wave a wand and get his big-picture promises done quickly, of course, that was never going to happen,” Mitchell said.

The city’s affordability crisis remains unaddressed on the rental front, for example: a March 2026 report from real estate firm the Corcoran Group found that median rent had risen to $5,000 a month in Manhattan and $4,150 in Brooklyn, hitting new record highs. Mamdani campaigned on a promise to freeze rent hikes for the roughly 2 million New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments. While the mayor does not have the authority to set rent policy directly, he has appointed six of the nine members of the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, which will vote on rent adjustment this June after holding public hearings with landlords, tenants and stakeholder groups. Analysts expect the final outcome to be a compromise rather than a full rent freeze, given competing political pressures.

“Everything is trade-offs in politics and in governing,” de Benedictis-Kessner said, noting that after engaging with stakeholder groups, the final policy is likely to look “slightly different” than what Mamdani’s most enthusiastic supporters imagined during the campaign.

Other key pledges have also moved slower than expected. Mamdani’s plan for a new standalone Department of Community Safety, which would deploy social workers instead of police to respond to non-criminal emergencies, has so far only materialized as a small two-person office within the mayor’s existing staff, rather than the $1.1 billion standalone agency he proposed during the campaign. His plan to make all city buses free and speed up bus routes has also been limited to small pilot programs, with citywide rollout still pending.

Mamdani’s signature plan to fund his expansive policy agenda – raising an estimated $9 billion through higher taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents and an increase in the corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5% – is currently blocked at the state level. Governor Hochul, who is running for re-election this year, has already indicated she opposes tax increases, meaning the mayor cannot move forward with his revenue plan without her administration’s support. “That’s going to be the challenge,” Mitchell said. “Because if she doesn’t [raise taxes], he’s really limited in what he can do.”

In a recent, accessible explainer delivered by the British Broadcasting Corporation’s veteran security correspondent Frank Gardner, the mechanics of the newly implemented United States blockade on Iranian ports have been broken down for global audiences in a concise two-minute analysis. The move, which marks a sharp escalation in long-running tensions between Washington and Tehran, targets maritime trade flowing through key Iranian port facilities that serve as critical economic arteries for the Islamic Republic.

Gardner’s breakdown unpacks the strategic logic behind the blockade, detailing how U.S. naval assets and enforcement mechanisms will be deployed to intercept incoming and outgoing commercial vessels connected to Iranian trade networks. The correspondent’s analysis also contextualizes the measure within the broader framework of U.S. foreign policy aimed at pressuring Iran over its nuclear program and regional military activities, addressing both the intended impacts of the restriction and potential unintended consequences that could ripple across global energy markets and Middle Eastern security.

The short-format explainer was designed to demystify the complex geopolitical move for the general public, cutting through jargon to clarify what the blockade means for shipping companies, regional actors, and the global economy. It comes at a time of heightened volatility in the Persian Gulf, where clashes between commercial shipping and regional militant groups have already raised international concerns over the security of one of the world’s busiest energy transit chokepoints.

A firestorm of bipartisan condemnation has forced former and current U.S. President Donald Trump to take down a controversial AI-created post on his Truth Social platform that depicted him in a Jesus-like healing role, capping a chaotic 24 hours that also saw an escalating public verbal clash with Pope Leo XIV over the ongoing military conflict in Iran.

The removed image, generated entirely through artificial intelligence, showed Trump dressed in a flowing white robe pressing a glowing hand to the forehead of a patient lying in a hospital bed, a composition intentionally echoing classic religious art depicting Jesus Christ healing the sick. The graphic layered in overtly patriotic American imagery as well: the Statue of Liberty stood in the background, a large American flag billowed beside it, fighter jets and a bald eagle were included, alongside a uniformed soldier, a praying woman, and a hospital nurse.

Criticism of the inflammatory post broke out within minutes of it going live, with condemnation coming even from corners of the conservative and faith-based movements that have been core supporters of Trump. Christian activist Sean Feucht, who is currently organizing a national series of faith-centered events to celebrate the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, publicly called for the image’s immediate removal, stating that there was no conceivable context in which the content could be considered appropriate.

Prominent conservative commentator and transgender rights critic Riley Gaines also pushed back against the post, invoking a biblical phrase by writing “God shall not be mocked.” Leading faith-based American media outlets joined the rebuke as well. David Brody, a senior journalist with the Christian Broadcasting Network, argued that the image crossed a clear red line, noting that even loyal backers of Trump’s policy agenda could reject the inappropriate content.

The ill-fated image was posted less than 60 minutes after Trump published a lengthy, scathing attack on Pope Leo XIV, the first American to hold the papacy, who has emerged as one of the most high-profile global critics of U.S. and Israeli military operations in Iran. In his original criticism, Trump branded the Pope “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.”

Pope Leo responded to Trump’s attack earlier on Monday, pushing back firmly against the president’s criticism. He stated that he has no fear of the Trump administration, and that his only commitment is to speaking openly about the core message of the Gospel, which he views as the central purpose of his role as pontiff. The Pope has repeatedly described the violence of the Iran war as “absurd and inhuman” in his public remarks.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump refused to issue any apology for either the attack on the Pope or the controversial image. He insisted that Pope Leo had taken the wrong position on the conflict, arguing that a nuclear-armed Iran cannot be tolerated, and claimed the Pope would ultimately be unsatisfied with the end result of the current military campaign.

The BBC has reached out to the White House to request official clarification on the specific circumstances that led to the image’s removal, and has not yet received a response. This incident is far from the first time that content posted to Trump’s Truth Social account has sparked major national controversy. Back in February, a racist edited video that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes was posted to the account before being removed. Initially, the White House defended the clip as a harmless “internet meme” and told critics to drop what it called “fake outrage,” but after sustained backlash from multiple Republican senators, the post was pulled, and a senior White House official claimed a junior staffer had published the clip “erroneously.”